May I not be forgiven for thinking it is a wonderful testimony to my being made for art, that when in the midst of this trouble and pain I sit down to my book, some beneficent power shows it all to me and tempts me to be interested, and I don’t invent it — really do not — but see it and write it down?

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic

Letter to biographer, John Forster

in J. F. Nisbet, The Insanity of Genius, ch. 10 (1893)